1. The 2014 Final Four: North Texas
North Texas became the ultimate fan zone for basketball when the Connecticut Huskies, Florida Gators, Kentucky Wildcats and Wisconsin Badgers flew into DFW International Airport for the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship. The Final Four brought a record-breaking number of fans to North Texas with 79,238 in attendance at AT&T Stadium for the championship game. Our region shined in the spotlight with over 40 million viewers tuning in to watch all three Final Four games. The event also left an incredible footprint on the community with 2,000 pairs of shoes and boxes of food donated and distributed through Samaritan’s Feet and Feed the Hungry, 15,900 people participated in the Service Leaning Adventure in North Texas (SLANT), 1,014 trees planted, 4,500 pounds of food donated to Mission Arlington and the North Texas Food Bank and an estimated 34,000 volunteer hours were given by over 2,500 volunteers for the Final Four. (For statistics, please click here)
SOURCE: NCAA Blog
2. DFW International Airport Celebrates 40 Years
Forty years after opening its doors in 1974, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is the world’s third busiest airport, hosting 1,850 flights a day and serving more than 62 million customers a year. Located halfway between the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, DFW Airport provides nonstop service to 147 domestic and 55 international destinations. A major economic driver for North Texas, DFW Airport generates over $31 billion in economic impact each year.
SOURCE: DFW Aviation & Transportation Career Expo
3. Toyota Announces North Texas Headquarters
Toyota announced it is establishing a North American Headquarters in Plano, Texas. The company is combining three separate North American headquarters from manufacturing, sales and marketing along with Toyota’s financial arm into one shared campus of 1.5 million square feet. The move will bring approximately 5,000 jobs and an estimated $7 billion dollar impact to the North Texas economy. The move is reported to take place in three phases with the new HQ opening in 2018.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News
4. Dallas Cowboys Break Ground in Frisco
In August, the Dallas Cowboys broke ground on a five-acre plot for their team’s new headquarters and training facilities. The new complex is within a 20-acre multi-use events center, set to open in time for the 2016 football season. The development will also feature office buildings, 150,000 square feet of retail space and a 12,000 seat indoor stadium that will give Frisco high school students world-class facility access.
SOURCE: Dallas Cowboys Twitter
5. Texas Turnover
For the first time in 12 years, all of the top state elected officials have changed at once as the result of the November ballot. Attorney General Greg Abbott (Governor-elect), State Sen. Dan Patrick (Lt. Governor), State Sen. Ken Paxton (Attorney General), State Sen. Glen Hegar (Comptroller), George P. Bush (Land Commissioner), Former State Rep. Sid Miller (Agriculture Commissioner) will all take office in January.
6. Big Year for Distribution
L’Oreal Cosmetics opened their $17 million dollar 500,000 square-foot distribution facility in the southern sector of Dallas. Also, BMW opened a Regional Distribution Center In Lancaster to store and distribute BMW parts to dealerships in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Combined with the five other Regional Distribution Centers, BMW has more than 80,000 unique part numbers across two million square feet of storage space, with more than 400 associates solely dedicated to processing dealer orders daily for the US market.
SOURCE: Business Wire
7. Airbus A380 lands at DFW
Quantas Airways and Emirates Airlines were the first two carriers to bring the super-sized Airbus 380 aircraft to DFW International Airport. As the world’s largest passenger airlines, the A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet liner that provides seating for 525 people in a typical three-class configuration or up to 853 passengers if it’s an all economy-class flight. North Texans can now fly direct to Sydney, Australia on Quantas or to Dubai on Emirates on this massive airliner.
SOURCE: DFW International Airport
8. The United States Conference of Mayors
In June, The 82nd Annual U.S. Conference of Mayors made its way to Dallas with 235 mayors in attendance. Over the span of the four-day conference, the mayors were engaged with the North Texas community. To kick-off the conference, Mayor Mike Rawlings turned breakfast into a dance party on the Continental Avenue Bridge.
SOURCE: Dallas City Hall
9. Texas Transportation Funding Amendment
Texas Transportation Funding Amendment, Proposition 1 was on the November 4, 2014 general election ballot in the state of Texas as a legislatively-referred constitutional amendment providing for the use and dedication of certain money transferred to the state highway fund to assist in the completion of transportation construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation projects, not to include toll roads.
10. The 2014 Winter Olympics
Kicking off the new year, the 2014 U.S. Olympic Team selected 230 world-class athletes to travel to Sochi, Russia. Four Texans were proud to represent their country on the global stage. Jordan Malone, a speed skater from Denton, Texas, earned a silver medal with the U.S. speed skating team in the men’s 500m relay. Johnny Quinn, member of the bobsled team also from Denton, became a social media super-star after breaking through his jammed bathroom door in his Sochi hotel room. Total, the U.S.A. brought home 25 medals, 9 of them gold.
SOURCE: Johnny Quinn Twitter